


Defender of the Faith

by historymiss



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Aang continues a cycle of a different kind, and Tenzin learns how it should end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defender of the Faith

Sometimes Tenzin feels as if he is simply an empty vessel in the shape of his father, waiting to be filled. He stands at the altar, silent, his brother and sister beside him. Katara hides her face in her hand and sobs.

Aang teaches him the rituals before he dies. There is no-one else. 

"This is important." he says, guiding his son's hand on the form he must use to guide the wind upwards. "Remember."

Tenzin knows his father is dying- he can feel the tremor in Aang's touch. His extra hundred years have settled on him like a weight.

"I can't." Tenzin breaks free, impetuous for the first time in his life. "This isn't right, father. Bumi is the eldest: you need to teach him."

Aang sighs, and looks out to the darkening sky. "Bumi isn't an airbender."

And there it is: the burden they share of being, between them, an entire people. The acolytes do their best, practicing forms they only half understand, and Aang holds out hope that one day a miracle might occur among them, but he will never hold his first grandchild in his arms and see his people reborn.

It is his duty to pass along what he can, and now that involves the rituals of death.

Tenzin lifts the ashes in his hands, says the words. In death Aang is not an Avatar, his great spirit fled, but a monk and nothing more.

"Avatar Aang, rest now in the knowledge of a life full and well lived."

In Republic City they have set up statues: in Ba Sing Se they drape the streets in white. 

"Though your spirit lives on, we commit your body to the winds."

The words are slightly different, of course: Aang will never be a true air nomad. His spirt, joined with the Avatars of the past, will never be free to return to the wind from which it came. One day, Tenzin will teach the true ritual to Meelo, and the cycle will continue.

"Fly free, and join your people at last."

Katara moans, low and ragged, the worst sound a mother can make. Kya holds her mother up, her own face rigid with grief.

Tenzin opens his hands, and lets the wind take the ash.

He helps it on its way with a quick movement of his wrist, the ghost of his father's hand on his arm. He should not, strictly speaking, be doing this alone, but there is no-one else.

"You are so like him." Katara says, maybe weeks or months later, when she can speak of it. "More than you know."

And try as he might, Tenzin cannot feel joy in that at all.


End file.
